You don’t expect a woman who once moonlighted as “Alexandra the Great” to lift barbell after barbell in a cold Toronto box gym at dawn, the chalk still thick in the air from the night before. But Danyah Glanville—Miss Danyah to her Canadian faithful—isn’t built for predictability. She’s cut from a different kind of cloth: the kind that doesn’t wrinkle under the lights, the kind that takes punishment and turns it into muscle memory. If you want glitz, check Vegas. If you want fire, try Danyah on a losing streak with something to prove.
Born under the frozen sky of Toronto, Canada—no official year stamped to her birthdate, which fits—Danyah (Rivietz) Glanville came up in a city of grind. She didn’t land in pro wrestling with the same silver spoon fantasy as some of the other muscle-bound heartbreakers. She came in from the dark alleys of fitness, of CrossFit pain and kickboxing bruises, and she made herself known not by noise but by silhouette—a statuesque 5-foot-9 woman with a body carved by punishment and protein.
She trained at the Squared Circle Pro Wrestling facility, sharpened her edges at the Devine Dungeon with Johnny Devine and Rob Fuego—names that sound like they belong on cassette tapes or behind pool halls. What she lacked in fame, she made up for in hustle, with a seriousness that made even the veterans whisper, “She’s got it, if someone would just give her the goddamn ball.”
You could tell the sport didn’t seduce her. She seduced it. Bent it over and made it watch as she forced her name onto the lineup, match after match. Her early career was a who’s-who of undercard brawls—tilts with Nattie Neidhart, Traci Brooks, Gail Kim. Losses? Plenty. But no one walked away unbruised. Danyah didn’t wrestle to win. She wrestled to endure, like a fighter trying to outlast a bad year.
She made her first splash in Shimmer Women Athletes, a promotion that prided itself on substance over stardust. And sure, she ate losses like bar snacks at a dive bar—Serena Deeb, Amazing Kong, Nikki Roxx—but she kept coming back. Because underneath the tan and tight gear was a woman who didn’t give a damn about looking good for the camera. She wanted to test herself, again and again, against the kind of women who ate hope for breakfast.
Her first win came against Cat Power on Shimmer Volume 22. A small victory, sure, but in a business built on spectacle and blood, it meant the world. For once, she got to hear the ring bell as the last woman standing. It didn’t happen often—but when it did, she earned every damn second of it.
She was meant to hit the big stage at NCW Femmes Fatales, but fate’s a real prick sometimes. Missed flights, last-minute cancellations, and the kind of backstage politics that would make a senator blush. Booked, then scratched. Scheduled, then ghosted. Maybe the business didn’t know what to do with a woman who looked like a magazine cover but fought like a diesel engine.
Then came Wrestlicious. Yeah, that Wrestlicious—Jimmy Hart’s surreal cocktail of cheesecake, gimmicks, and ring psychology straight out of a fever dream. They named her Alexandra the Great, a Polish powerhouse with flex appeal. Her gimmick? Brute strength and fierce nationalism wrapped in leotard and legacy. It was wrestling for people who liked their violence with a laugh track, but even then, Danyah showed up like a lion in a kitten parade. One minute she was taking on Brooke Lynne, the next she was winning submission matches and being attacked by girls with names like Kickstart Katie. The show didn’t last. Danyah did.
What people remember isn’t the glitz. It’s her body—the best in wrestling, voted by PWI in both 2010 and 2011—and how it didn’t fold under pressure. She was statuesque, yes, but not static. She moved like a prizefighter and posed like a cover model, and in a sport where most women were either brawlers or Barbie dolls, she was both, goddammit.
When the bookings slowed and the lights faded, she didn’t stop moving. Instead, she took that steel trap of a body and threw herself into CrossFit, becoming a competitor with the same relentless obsession she showed in the ring. Iron Force Athletics. Local and regional competitions. A different kind of cage, a different kind of fight. Still no script, still no soft landings.
You’ll find her now where the gym smells like rust and victory, buried under deadlifts and the kind of silence that comes from knowing your best years didn’t go viral, didn’t headline, didn’t get the poster spot. But they mattered. Hell, they mattered more.
Danyah Glanville is the story of the nearly-was, the just-missed, the too-real-for-reality. She’s what happens when talent meets bad timing in a business that eats its young and forgets its grinders. But even now, in the margins of the wrestling books, she stands tall—a bruised, beautiful figure forged in fluorescent light and the hum of crowds that never quite roared loud enough.
She’s not bitter. She’s better.
And maybe that’s the most Bukowski thing of all. Because life doesn’t always give you the belt. Sometimes, it just lets you keep fighting.